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Love and College

This week I read an article on the Huffington Post website about Facebook and Apple paying for their female employees to freeze their own eggs. Reasoning for enforcing this health aspect into their employees contracts include women working with their companies longer and due to that Apple and facebook can “cut down on recruiting and hiring costs. These companies also have the ability to save on the cost of pregnancy (maternity leaves, etc.) for each employee.

I found this article to be quite interesting. As part of my own faith I believe your body should run its course as it naturally wants to. Also I don’t believe women should make this decision so early in their lives. They should use other outlets to prevent pregnancy until they are at a well-established age (40 years old and older) to make a decision so life-changing. People constantly change their minds and for one younger than 40 to decide they never want to have children is a humongous risk to take.

I do not however believe what Apple and Facebook are trying to pursue is wrong. I support the process of freezing eggs. I believe this is a great alternative for those who want to keep the option of having children even though they aren’t seeking to reproduce at the moment. However those

who go through with this procedure run the huge risk of it not working.

Who doesn’t want to save money? If the employees of Facebook and Apple are interested in this opportunity, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be presented with the option to take it. I do however believe the age in which women are given this option should lie sometime in a woman’s late 30’s. Women should be given the right to do with their body as their please with the assumption that they are certain about the decision they are making and it does not potentially harm them.

This week I read quite a shocking article about ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and a threat they made to twitter’s employees and CEO Dick Costolo. Apparently, terrorists had been using the site to communicate messages and the company removed their content due to regulation restrictions. This act by twitter lead to the fearing of life for many employees.

The relationships the United States holds internationally have clearly been taking a turn for the worst and to be directly targeted is quite frightening especially for CEO Dick Costolo. One of the messages that twitter employees removed from the site was the beheading of Journalist James Foley, obviously a gruesome image to envision. This article has proven how unsafe these social media websites are and while they may help in a variety of different ways, in many ways they can be rather dangerous.

In relation to the assignment I completed this week I see why it is especially important to pay close attention to the information your disperse about yourself or anyone else for that matter on the internet. The employees of the Twitter corporation were simply doing their job and following the rules and regulations they have set in place for users. This threat was unexpected and certainly undeserved.

Using Mozilla’s Lightbeam add on was a slight challenge for me. It took me a little while to understand the diagram however when I finally did get a good glimpse at what I was looking at the results were shocking. I had visited only 11 websites and on each of them I made no interaction with anyone. I did not even so much as post a new post on a social media website however I managed to connect with 242 third parties!

What I’ve noticed from this assignment was that the largest percentage of my Facebook friends are either not very interested in politics or ignored my post. I was actually expecting some response to my unusual behavior on the site especially being I am a very strong-willed person and my friends know that I will FIGHT for what I believe. I re-posted pictures and articles posted from Ted Cruz’s, junior United States Senator, Facebook fan page and I did not receive so much as a like on any post.

After reading, I agreed most with Eytan Bakshy’s article Rethinking Information Diversity in Networks especially the portion written based on The Collective Influence of Weak Ties. Every Idea is derived from somewhere and most times our source for a post were posted on Facebook or Instagram were not originated by those we have strong ties with through social media.

Courtesy of Eytan Bakshy

What I did learn from this assignment was that all my ideas do not differ from the thoughts of conservatives. Instead of simply ignoring the post as they showed up on my feed because they did not interest me, I read them. I agreed with many of the points made in this article and as embarrassing as this sounds, I had no prior knowledge of this policy. I am a leftist however I stand for whats right, I won’t simply support my party if they aren’t deserving of it.I also learned that politicians depend greatly on social media to disperse news. Because the old fashioned ways of gathering news such as newspaper and television are dying out in this generation, politicians set their focus on their social media sites where it will potentially receive the most exposure.

I don’t believe I will continue to follow the specific politicians I chose to follow but I do plan to explore the ideas of the conservative politicians in this country. I also followed a couple of women conservatives. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. If anyone knows me, they know I am definitely not a fan of Sarah Palin. And even after completing this assignment she is the first person I want to get rid of. However even considering her posts that I do not agree with I kept an open-mind and instead of bashing her for her ideas I realized that my ideas will not always be agreed upon.

This assignment encouraged me to broaden my knowledge on different topics and, even though I thought it was impossible, have a more open-mind.

Molly Wood, a reporter for the NY Times wrote an article based on social network news feeds. I found this article to be really interesting. I did not realize just how much these social networks have changed over the years and I also had to paid much attention to the importance of the news feed (mainly because I focus most of my attention on my profile). In high school I was an extremely active twitter user and actually observing the new abilities and overall appearance has change drastically in such short time. Facebook was founded in 2004 however “the feed was introduced in 2006”. Facebook has changed a great deal since then. Every thing is easily accessible from your news feed now. You can view posts from friends, comments being posted on the side, chat conversations and more on the same screen. The designers of this website have to assure that it caters to people of all ages as well hence the importance of the news feed. The appearance must be inviting and user-friendly to gain more users.

I do agree that Twitter’s template is starting to look very similar to Facebook. Although I love the simplicity of the Facebook news feed, I do not like that twitter limits it’s users to just a few sentences per post. I understand that the purpose of twitter is to create short post but I believe viewers should be given the options to write a little more if they want. And even with Twitter’s advances, Facebook still trumps Twitter because of the filters the news feed allows (top stories and most recent).

I found this boo to be overall uninteresting however I did find a few interesting points made throughout the first four chapters.

1. “Compared with other animals, they have strikingly large brains relative to their bodies. Moreover, most of the extra brain volume is devoted to one part of the brain in particular: the neocortex, which is involved in higher functions such as spatial reasoning, sensory perception, and conscious thought.” (Standage, 8)

This especially caught my eye because I find it interesting how differently the human brain works as opposed to animals. We are effected by our outsides differently than animals. And the media holds the most impact on the human mind. However animals are not effected in the same way. Not even those most closely related to the human. For instance, societal appearances do not effect chimpanzees the way it does humans. They aspire to live while humans aspire to live and be beautiful. This sparked questions for me such as, why are humans influenced so much by their surroundings? Why is fame and fortune so important to people?

2. “Dictating and exchanging letters, sharing written news, and keeping up with the latest books required the ownership of specialist slaves and was, accordingly, limited to the Roman elite of Aristocats, generals, lawyers, state officials, and businessmen. But ordinary people came into daily contact with another form of media in which almost anyone could participate: graffiti.” (Standage, 38)

I have learned a lot about ancient Egypt in school so even though this information was not particularly new to me, I still found it fascinating. I imagine that the news some news must have been difficult to decipher and to actually make these graffiti markings could have been time consuming. To think this was the main source for getting news is perplexing seeing how far the news industry has come. I also love that journalism has not evolved in the sort that anyone can be one. Even in Ancient Egypt people did need to be educated to share news or print their stories. Anyone can be journalist.

3. “It was not just words that traveled along the social networks of the Reformation era, but music and images, too. The news ballad, like the pamphlet, was a relatively new media format. It set a poetic and often exaggerated description of contemporary events to a familiar tune so that it could be easily learned, sung, and taught to others.” (Standage, 57-58)

Lastly, I am a music fanatic and had never heard any information such as the quote I left about until I read this book. I feel if music was used to disperse news more so now in this day and age, more people would be aware of their local news and politics. Many people my age are not interested in reading up on current events and using a method such as this just may make my peers more aware.

This book made me see just how much technology is taking over not just the news industry, but all industries and how far writing/news has come from the its beginning. I like that Standage gives a story like feel to his text and draws images of how social media existed in the past and the ways in which it differs now.

I found this article on the People Magazine website. I think it was successful because it was simple, a good length, straight-forward and detailed. It included dialogue, links, even footage of the newscast in which Greene quit. The next step for People Magazine would be to do a follow up story on Greene. Below the article, People Magazine already has a link asking viewers to sign up for more stories related to this article. And below this link is a bunch of links to other article published on the site.

I thought Greene’s actions were extremely brave. I commend her efforts for fighting for what she believes in however, I hope she has a back up plan as far as finances because finding a job in the journalism field may not be possible after this occurrence. Her reputation as a credible reporter is ruined because she left her job to advocate what is currently illegal and disapproved of in Alaska.

The layout of my company’s website makes everything easily accessible for our large audience. We include tabs labeled by different interests and beneath those tabs we include pictures, text and links to breaking stories (in which all have captions stating the point of the article) on our website that day. Also the bright yet simple colors we use on our website attract viewers.Also at the very top of the screen our website links to other popular magazine websites such as In Style magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Aside from the content on our site, incorporating videos, links to other site and including navigation links straight to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter makes readers revisit the site.

The dark colors (purple and black) of this website really takes away from it’s creativity. When I first entered this website my first thoughts were “boring.” The bulky text font and the very large slideshow on the homepage of the website make the site look empty when you reach the home page. The fact that there is no tab menu but instead a drop down menu only visible after clicking the designated area on the screen, could draw an audience away. People prefer simplicity especially older viewers who aren’t quite fluent with technology.

This website has a good idea. The tab menu works for attracting audiences however, each story link posted on the homepage including an image is either entirely too large or too small and descriptions with these images were also rather long. Also the length of the homepage is entirely too long. Another downfall of this website’s layout is the colors. Black, red and white are really boring colors especially when the majority of the website’s color is white. Also this website has way too much advertising.

Another intriguing fact about this case is in comparison to Rice’s case, the NFL did not take the same precautions although I think they should have. Peterson abused a child only four-years-old leaving horrific scars and he still has the opportunity to excel as a football player. Although both acts of violence, honestly believe Peterson’s crime was worse than Rice’s. Simply because there is nothing a four-year-old could do to deserve such a horrible beating. I also feel there was nothing Palmer, Rice’s wife, could have done to deserve that strike in the face however, Palmer is an adult with a fully developed brain and sense of right and wrong.

Ray Rice was a Running Back for the Baltimore Ravens. He was drafted into the NFL from Rutgers college in 2008 .New Rochelle, NY. Rice signed a 5 year contract with the Ravens in 2012 but due to a domestic violence altercation Rice may never play professional football again.

The Baltimore Ravens’ Former Running Back Ray Rice was cut from the team today indefinitely for a video displaying Rice partaking in domestic violence. Recently married Ray Rice and Janay Palmer were recorded in an elevator where Rice strikes Palmer in the face twice leaving her unconscious. Rice then drags her body out of the elevator and lies her face down on the ground. The incident not only largely concerned and disturbed fans and public, but also largely impacted fellow football players and coaches. One month after the attack, Feb. 15th, the couple was married.

The incident brought forth much attention and judgment. John Harbaugh, the Ravens coach, and officials immediately released Rice after viewing the video footage. However, on March 28 Rice and Palmer were pronounced husband and wife only one day after Rice’s indictment. As punishment for his crime, Rice is expected to complete a pretrial diversionary program as opposed to serving a prison sentence.